Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

Stagnation

He remembered everything.

From the time of his first introduction to society, through the early years of his work, and the many events that followed after. He was a changed creature quite significantly, once he had worked for the despotic Vrul council on a world under silent siege, and then he had taken to interplanetary ventures out of his own curiosity, and then he had defected to an alien ship for his own entertainment. A decade ago krill had stepped foot on a human ship through the merit of curiosity and a desire for knowledge.

Today he was secure in saying that he understood humanity more than anyone in history ever had.

He understood life more than anyone ever had.

Humanity was special, of course, but it was all part of a bigger picture, and the truth he saw now had been ears in the making. If only his former self had known what was to come....

And now here he stood, on solid ground, the dean of his own hospital, head surgeon, the first to discover the true nature of the mind body connection and manipulate it to his own ends. The power in his hands felt godlike.

Wrong

He was playing with something he knew he didn't understand, and he knew what happened to those people.

It didn't turn out well.

Sitting in the darkness of his office, Dr, Krill examined the scans from his last major surgery. Funny how symmetrical this all was. This entire venture had begun with a scan of Adam Vir's brain, so it was almost poetic that his understanding would end here, with another scan of Adam's brain neatly labeled with its new anatomy.

The Nexus Anima, at least in the human brain, was located deep within the brain stem, well insulated from more cosmetic injury. The Nexus itself was well connected to the body's vital functioning, but especially to the beating f the heart. As far as Krill understood it, the Nexus threads began to fray as soon as a heartbeat was no longer detected causing the thread to eventually snap. Keeping the heart beating could artificially keep the thread from breaking. Still, the mind and the soul were certainly separate meaning the body could outlast the soul on certain occasions.

It didn't take much to sever the Nexus.

"Am I interrupting your mad scientist brooding."

Krill's antennae hummed as he turned away from his diagrams. Riss was standing in the doorway a cup of tea in each hand, "thought you might want a break."

"You thought wrong, but you may enter anyway." Krill said scuttling over to his desk where the two sat to share the tea, again which wasn't actually tea but warm sugar water.

Riiss peered around Krill's shoulder, "And what is all this? Feeling a bit nostalgic today."

Krill turned to glance over his shoulder at the waiting diagram, "Wouldn't you. Our lives used to be so simple all I had to do was keep the humans from dying, which I admit is no easy feat, but at least then the entire universe wasn't hanging in the balance."

Riss leaned back in his seat a particularly human look of amusement on his face, "And how does that make you feel.

"I will throw this mug at your head,." Krill threatened mildly.

"Now that would be domestic violence."

Krill harumphed once and then eased back into sullen silence, "Do you get the feeling that we aren't doing enough."

Riss paused and shook his head, "What do you mean?"

"I mean it seems like lately we are simply in a reactionary state. Something happens and we respond to it, but we aren't really proactive in dealing with the problem. We simply sit here and wait for things to happen as everything around us stalls out. It wasn't like this when we didn't have a planet. When we were on the ship it felt like we could anticipate and react before things happened, but now we are just trying to protect home base."